The Invisible Art: The Yale Peabody Museum Dioramas

In the museum world, the Yale Peabody Museum’s dioramas are considered
masterpieces. In them our eye moves effortlessly from the specimens in
the foreground to the background through the veil of atmosphere, into a
vista that seems to stretch endlessly beyond the horizon. We accept the
diorama as casually as if it were a window into the natural world.

A diorama combines three-dimensional foreground material with a curved
background wall and domed ceiling to tell the story of an ecosystem.
Our attention is focused on the flora and fauna in the foreground; the
painted background and ceiling establish time, place and mood.

J. Perry Wilson (1889–1976) was one of three men responsible for the
exquisite Peabody Museum dioramas. Both he and Francis Lee Jaques
(1887–1969) had honed their skills painting diorama backgrounds at the
American Museum of Natural History before receiving commissions to do
similar work at the Peabody. Ralph C. Morrill, for 43 years the
Peabody’s Chief Preparator, collaborated with both artists; it was he
who created the dioramas’ extraordinarily lively — and lifelike —
foregrounds.

For
several years, beginning in October 1944, Perry Wilson was periodically
on leave from the American Museum to work with Ralph Morrill on the
Hall of Southern New England dioramas, the largest being the 35
foot-long Coastal Region (detail at left). Several groups in the North
American Hall (such as the Kaibab Plateau diorama, below) were the work
of Francis Lee Jaques.

Both artists brought an
extraordinary sense of mood and atmosphere to diorama painting, but
Wilson added something else: his own unique system for transferring the
background image onto a background surface of any shape. This technique
was an important advance because it could be adapted to any of the
oddly-shaped spaces diorama artists often have to work with. The Wilson
method enabled him to avoid the inaccuracies inherent in freehand
drawing. Regrettably, few artists working now are even aware of the
technique.

Wilson’s
skillful treatment of water, rocks, marsh grass, forest floor, or
sphagnum moss in the background also facilitated the installation of
plants and animals in the foreground. Generations of visitors have
spent countless hours trying in vain to determine where foreground
becomes background in a Wilson–Morrill diorama. The illusion is
enhanced by the use of a two-inch separation between these parts of the
scene; when properly lit, shadows cast by the foreground material fall
unseen, not on the background.

Between 1991 and 1996,
the Peabody Museum’s dioramas were restored to their original luster by
Raymond deLucia, Preparator Emeritus, American Museum of Natural
History, and Michael Anderson, Museum Preparator, Peabody Museum,
thanks to the generosity of the O.C. Marsh Fellows and an anonymous
donor.

For more on the techniques used to create the Yale Peabody Museum dioramas, see: